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Christian History

Today in Christian History

October 21

October 21, 1555: Finding that the recent martyrdom of bishops Nicholas Ridley and Hugh Latimer had intensified Protestant zeal, Queen Mary launches a series of fierce persecutions in which more than 200 men, women, and children were killed (see issue 48: Thomas Cranmer).

October 21, 1663: Virginia colonist John Harlow is fined 50 pounds of tobacco for missing church.

October 21, 1692: William Penn is deposed as governor of Pennsylvania. His grateful overtures to James II for permitting religious freedom for Dissenters from the Church of England led William and Mary to charge Penn with being a papist. They were also troubled by his pacifism.

October 21, 1970: John T. Scopes, the Tennessee teacher convicted for teaching evolution, dies at age 70 (see issue 55: The Monkey Trial and the Rise of Fundamentalism).

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March 28, 1515: Spanish mystic Teresa of Avila, founder of a reformed Carmelite order, is born. Though her contemporaries noted her practicality and administrative skills, her legacy stems from her mysticism, evidenced in her Autobiography, Way of Perfection, Book of Foundations, and Interior Castle.

March 28, 1592: Czech theologian Jan Comenius, educator of the Bohemian (or Moravian) Brethren, is born in Nivnice, Czechoslovakia. As today, the region was tormented by warfare, and Comenius believed ...

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